Athlone thread

The bypass wasn't "specifically designed to take agri traffic out of the town". It was built to take traffic out of town who had no need to be in town going from A to B. No investment such as that bypass is sanctioned to take a few tractors away. The reason it remains at 100km/h despite the motorway being built is due to the many junctions, some of which are on bends (Garrycastle, Monksland) when heading west. The right thing to do when the motorway was being built is build again around Athlone and maintain 120km/h. The cost was prohibitive

Once your going 50km/h, which a huge amount of agri stuff are well capable of, you can use the motorway. The reason was primarily safety at the junctions and vehicles motoring at 120km/h. The road itself, due to the safety could never be designated as a motorway and remains a grade-separated dual carriageway, which has a maximum speed of 100km/h designated to such road types. The only way to get the bypass up to motorway standard and speed is huge investment on it. May be cheaper to build a southern bypass of the town and link into the M6 both sides of Athlone.

Nevertheless, reducing speed to 80km/h on it seems mental

Personally don't have much sympathy for the residents. Better insulated windows would help. Sow some trees and plants in their gardens to "block" the noise plus the barriers along the residential parts of the road would also help. Even going by the article these reduce noise by ~9 decibels vs. 1.7 for reducing the speed and discommoding the ~35k daily users of the road

The noise should come down as more and more of the cars using the bypass turn electric. I have to say as a young learner, it was a great help to get some legal experience as to how to drive on a motorway properly.

Road/wind noise as distinct from engine noise will always exist with EVs. Indeed, because of their greater weight due to the heavy battery, they chew up tyres and make more road noise than an equivalently sized ICE vehicle.

Reducing speed makes huge sense for EVs, which mostly hate high speeds anyway, as it kills range.

Greater attention will need to be paid to road surfaces as EV numbers rise, both to quieten road noise and deal with heavier vehicles.

Avg speed cameras were placed on the M7 earlier in the year.

Yeah... Around 15 months in operation on a small section so far.

I was struck by the TII analysis finding 40% of drivers exceeding 120 kph during the asessment period. As far as Im concerned, they should be everywhere, subject to sensible limits being in place.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/speed-over-distance-cameras-go-live-on-the-m7-in-co-tipperary-1.4860723

Do you even drive?

I lived in the UK most my life, these cameras are absolutely everywhere. It's hell! Constantly watching speedo. Cameras pointing at you everywhere you go. Take your eye off the speedo for a minute to look at the scenery and boom you got a fine and points.

Speed really isn't the bogey man some people make it out to be. I've driven well over a million miles in 31yrs, cars, vans, motorbikes, small trucks, HGV trucks the length and breadth of UK and Ireland. The problem is the standard of driving, and more recently mobile phones.

No amount of cameras solve either.

I see people do unbelievable things every week that are insane. Cameras won't detect any of it.

They're a cash cow, that's all.

Why don't they start with enforcing the existing rules and see how that goes?

But they aren't going to put average speed cameras on rural roads. Maybe more motorway and national primary routes alright but the speeds on those aren't mentioned for changing

Enforcement of the existing rules should be priority #1 before billions get spent on nonsense. One of the problems with a successful economy is clowns try their hardest to spend the excess on shite.

What are the speed limit alerts you mention? Hadn't heard of those. Heard of limiters alright but unless they are geo-fenced then they are useless too. Alerts can be ignored.

We've been on a great trajectory in terms of road deaths over the past decade or so, despite more cars on the roads at the existing speed levels. Mass reductions due to one bad year is a kneejerk reaction IMO.

Maybe. Most cars already have a limiter fitted to 155km/h. There was talk of making that more stringent down to 120km/h, and then geo-fencing it based on traffic signs. A lot of cars can read the speed signs and display on the dash (in way too many cases, this is an optional extra) so it would be easy to tie the limiter to that. Perhaps the alert then is if you exceed the limiter or something.

Revenue collectors to have a field day

Any word yet on when the bus stop outside the barracks will move back down the road to the gallery? I seen the temporary zebra crossing is gone but the stop is still there and the bus still stops at the barracks.

Wouldnt blame them. Daft route. The Eurovelo project is to link cities. Doing it in such a zigzag route is mental. If it was about the scenery of the route, do you really think theyd have done Mullingar to Athlone.

Of course thats not the main reason theyre pulling out but I dont think many will care given the pointless route it is now taking. At least the section near Athlone links alot of bike commuters

In fairness the brits did the hard work in land acquisition for the mullingar to athlone greenway. And most greenways in the country. Took us a hundred years to attempt similar scale infrastructure projects.

Landowners were even happy to see likes of old mullingar line disused and decaying. Anecdotally many would have half an eye on incorporating parts of it into their holding. I've seen this happen a good few times and it seems relatively easy to get your local council to extinguish rights of way and routes if nobody objects.

That said, I agree, the new route is daft. A simpler solution would have been follow the motorway. There are new access roads along most of the motorway each side. Although I know there's the odd new house built on them now - which is very poor planning by roscommon Co council (but that's not surprising given their atrocious record in monksland)

Mr price is excellent... even if it violates planning law. Did they ever get that rectified?

Although the cheapest of those discounts stores in Athlone continues to be supersavers in Monksland

Homestoreandmore is fairly premium alright, apart from their special sales. Jysk should probably survive with all the new houses in the town.

Coppers?

Closed many years ago.

There was a minor fire above Peddlers (that name you're looking for). Not sure how serious or even genuine. Theyre not losing much this time of year. Maybe using the time to finish renovations too.

Devils advocate, the junction beside that garage is mental. If you are pulling out of the garage, you get stuck if there is a queue for the lights. Add a LIDL to that with tonnes more traffic lights and the Tuam Road becomes Ballymahon Road mark 2.

Saying all that, id love to see Monksland slowed to town levels. Revvers need to be silenced.

I did (briefly) see plans for the site, and this was taken into account. That entire section was being bought, including all those houses along the Roscommon road, across from the old butchers. There would have been a new entrance/exit onto the Roscommon road and the junction with the lights was being redone.